Comix Talk

Happy Martin Luther King Jr. day. If you've got the day off consider doing some good deeds today.

I'm probably going to keep flogging the new ComixTALK page at Facebook this month – apologies in advance!  It's much easier to flip through the cover art and photos from SPX and Intervention over there.  There's also links to the video interviews I did last fall.

COPYFIGHT: Techdirt links to an interview Nina Paley who has become quite outspoken on copyright issues after her battle to get her animated movie Sita Sings The Blues released.

AWARDS: The Webcomic List website is holding the 2nd edition of an awards program.  The nominees are out – full list available here.  If I understand the format correctly – the winner in each category will be selected by a panel of judges which includes El Santo of the review blog Webcomic Overlook and John Allison, creator of Bad Machinery.

REVIEW: Boing Boing reviews the new Axe Cop book from Dark Horse.

INTERVIEW: Here's a link to the entire series of interviews Tom Spurgeon published on his site the last month or so.  Well worth clicking to see the list of names – you're sure to be interested in something (if not all!).

HYPE!

• Have I mentioned Hipsters yet? It just started – no more than 20 comics up yet.  A really funny start – a party full of hipsters is attacked by real vampires.
• Hollywood should probably steal the joke from this Let's Be Friends Again comic for the next Spiderman movie.

NOT WEBCOMICS: This is a funny home-made video in a series called 90 Second Newbery Film Festival – the challenge being to make a 90 second version of a Newbery award winning book.  (h/t Boingboing)  The Newbery Medal is the most prestigious award in children’s literature. The American Library Association has awarded it every year since 1922.

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My hometown convention and a great place for comics – SPX – has locked down it's September 10 and 11 dates for 2011 and opened up exhibitor registration.  The registration form is up on the web site and tables are available, first come, first serve. Getting a table before March 1st gets you a 20% discount.

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Have I mentioned that ComixTALK is on Facebook now? Well ComixTALK is on Facebook now — if you're there too please consider "liking" us.  Thanks!

SPACE 2011: Check out Christopher Baldwin's Spacetrawler comic today.  Done as an introduction to the forthcoming print book, it features Baldwin himself breaking the fourth wall.  As far as the book – Baldwin also reports that it was shipped to the printer this week on Monday, as planned with an estimate on the release date coming soon.

HYPE: Really liked today's Bad Machinery. Writing for 'tweens strikes me as challenging and the last panels of this one captured that in-between-ness well.  Also – funny!

DEAD TREES: Newspaper syndicate offers a bargain – one month free! – on possibly the best strip in the newspapers, Cul De Sac.

iWEBCOMICS: Mark Millar writes about digital comics – between Apple and his publisher, he's only making 35% of the digital comic's price.  Not sure how that compares to floppy paper profits to a creator though.

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Webcomics On Ice — featuring your a cavalcade of webcomic types!

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I finished loading all of the monthly cover art we ran at ComixTALK from 2003 to 2009 in yearly photo albums at ComixTALK's new Facebook page.  I have mixed feelings about dropping that from the site design in 2010 – especially after looking back over all of the great comickers that contributed to the series. In any event – if you are on Facebook, please "like" the ComixTALK Facebook page.  Thanks!

After all of the news yesterday it's a bit slow so far this morning:

OPINION: A Gene Yang comic comments on a recent WSJ article on "Chinese Mothers".

REVIEW: Tangents reviews Dumbing of Age by David Willis

AROUND THE WORLD IN 80 BLOGS

• Should you work for free? This chart should help but if not at least you'll laugh.
• You can search for Calvin and Hobbes comic strips by their transcripts here .

NOT WEBCOMICS BUT PRETTY COOL

It's from last month but CMYKiller is always in the haus:

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SOCIAL MEDIA TIME: This week I created a Facebook page for ComixTALK – if you're on the FB, please "like" us.  I've already loaded to it a lot of my archive (2003-2010) of photos and the monthly cover art we used to run at ComixTALK.  Also – I find myself linking to more short stuff on twitter these days – you might find it mildly interesting to follow me on twitter. 

CONVENTION 'VENTION WHAT'S YOUR INTENTION: Zach Weiner has a post up on "convention tips" which is actually pretty funny. Hopefully you're not guilty of any of the "bad" behaviors noted but if any of it sounds like you, take Zach's advice next time you're at a con.

ADVICE FOR THE YOUNG AT HEART: Steve Napierski with some good advice on starting and sticking with a webcomic.

PLUG ONE: Scott M.C. Cloud links to Ryan A's Nothing is Forgotten – a silent comic with "some pretty effective sequences (I especially like the way he uses windows)."  Ryan A also has some info on his process here.

PLUG TWO: Scott Kurtz moved to Seattle, Washington.  The characters in his webcomic, PvP, now look like they will be moving to Seattle.  How often does this happen in comic strips — I'm not sure I can think of any other examples offhand.  In PvP's case, I've never thought of it as taking place anywhere specifically though so I'm not sure it has to have any impact on the strip. In other comics the location is more apparent and part of the comic — changing locations could be a really risky thing.

PLUG THREE: xkcd with some excellent advice for Ke$ha.

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It's all over the intertubes this morning — Drawn & Quarterly announced that it had acquired the rights to publish a hardcover version of Kate Beaton's work. Congrats to Kate Beaton. Given Beaton's enthusiastic fan base I suspect that the odds are really good D&Q will have a huge success with this.

Full press release follows:

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Borrowing from the marketing jujitsu of Machine of Death, the Foglios have urged fans to buy TODAY the new (text) novelization of Girl Genius titled Agatha H and the Airship City — if they sell a lot of books today it should draw the attention of buyers at independent book stores, and also push it up the rankings at Amazon.com.

January 12 is Kaja's birthday, and it's also our self-declared Girl Genius Day! We're hoping you'll do something suitably mad and/or steampunkalicious for the occasion.

I also saw that Scott Kurtz wrote a nice post in support of the plan:

Today is Girl Genius day. And everyone reading this should celebrate.  For those that don’t know, Girl Genius is the amazing steampunk webcomic by Seattle based cartoonist Phil and Kaja Foglio. The couple recently published a prose novelization of their work called Agatha H and the Airship City. And tomorrow is the day they hope you buy it.The idea is that, if a lot of people buy the same book on the same day, it will help get them noticed by the buyers at your local independent book stores, and also push us up high in the rankings at sites like Amazon.com. High sales rankings definitely help raise awareness of the series.  Tomorrow is also Kaja’s birthday. And buying the book would be an amazing gift to her.

Scott also mentions that Phil and Kaja are doing a book signing in Seattle at Ravenna Third Place Books (6504 20th Avenue NE, Seattle, WA 9815).

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Self described as the "Greatest Live Art Competition in the Known Universe", Baltimore's own SUPER ART FIGHT returns to The Ottobar on Friday, January 21st, 2010 for the latest in their absolutely amazing live events – SUPER ART FIGHT 9!  Super Art Fight 9 combines a full card of four bouts with two stunning musical acts. Appearing live on the Ottobar stage that evening as musical guests are the japanese action comic punk trio PEELANDER-Z, and the video game music stylings of local favorites RARE CANDY.  

Presented on the canvas that evening will be the following bouts:

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I'm burrowed into the X-cave awaiting another edition of SNOWPOCALYPSE_tm here where people raid the stores for eggs and toilet paper and drive like this guy.

WE ARE THE WORLD: Lora Innes writes that the Comic Creators Alliance has returned this year to raise money & awareness for National Human Trafficking Awareness Day. The Comic Creators Alliance is a group of over 100 comic book creators (both web and print!) who all contributed art that was assembled into a single image to raise money and awareness for this cause.  The group raised 10,000 dollars in 2010 — with more creators involved this year I hope they can raise even more money.

DEBUTING TODAY: Doug TenNapel (Earthworm Jim, Iron West, Ghostopolis) has launched a webcomic, Ratfist. There's only one comic up so far, but you can see the experience of TenNapel in deftly setting up an initial premise all at once.  The coloring is also looking good – it's by Katherine Garner.

NEW YORKER REMIXED: Assuming Tumblr isn't down today check out The Monkeys You Ordered which pairs literal punchlines with New Yorker cartoons (the same concept as that literal version of the Take On Me video).  It's often a funny result, even if it's more funny strange than ha-ha-ha.

MORE, META NEILJAM: Neil Fitzpatrick writes that his Neil Jam comic strip is making the jump to three new strips per week (Monday, Wednesday, and Friday.  I’ve been doing this series of strips for over two years now, and am excited to step it up a notch in the new year. Recently, I grew tired of the antics of the characters in my comic strip and decided to enter the strip myself in order to shake things up.  Adjusting to life as a comic strip character has not been easy but I feel it was the right thing to do. 

REVIEW: Tangents reviews Eerie Cuties – Gisèle Lagacé's other webcomic.

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